However, despite Wilmar's announcement, this has not led automatically to the cleaning up of its supply chain from Pundi’s palm oil. In fact, Wilmar has only ceased sourcing from the Pundi mill, and not rejecting Pundi’s palm oil from its indirect supply chain altogether.

As such, Wilmar's supply chain is still indirectly linked to Pundi's palm oil through its other suppliers. This should be a key concern with respect to Wilmar’s new policy measures.

The Planet Explorer images below show how a Pundi palm oil company (PT PWA) continued to drain the home of the Bornean orangutan in its concession as of the end of December 2018. Wilmar's supply chain is thus still indirectly tied to this destructive practice.

As long as Wilmar’s supply chain cannot deal with its indirect sourcing problems, this supply chain will continue to be involved in new deforestation and peat drainage despite the issuance of its new policy measures.

"It usually takes some time for the full supply chain (from producer to retailer) to adjust to new policies, and supply chain exclusions," was part of Wakker's written response to foresthints.news (Jan 4).

He also wrote that Wilmar had only ceased purchasing from the Pundi mill as of December 2018. This means that the world's largest palm oil trader has not removed Pundi's palm oil from its indirect supply chain completely.

However, Wakker stressed that, “one has to be aware that there is some inevitable time lag in public reporting of supplier data.”

This situation makes it clear that ceasing sourcing from a supplier mill does not equate to banning the palm oil from the supplier in question through indirect sourcing, as in the case of Wilmar and Pundi’s palm oil.

This serves as a lesson learned that the new Wilmar policy measures still need to address indirect sourcing problems in order to prevent ‘dirty palm oil’ from becoming part of Wilmar's supply chain.